Salesforce was born out of thinking differently. It’s a big part of what makes us successful and has evolved into a building block of our company culture. Call it what you want: disruption, innovation, revolution. For us it’s all about challenging the status quo to help our customers do business better...it’s all about customer success.

This mentality extends far beyond the products we make, and actually drives the way we onboard and ensure the success of our employees. If you’ve ever seen the way we onboard and ramp our sales people here at Salesforce you know it’s something really extraordinary. Our global Market Readiness team is devoted solely to innovating a best-in-class sales program that we can share with the world.

We currently onboard over 100 new salespeople every two weeks, and support an army of over 4,500 account executives across the globe. In developing a program of this scale over the past 17 years, we’ve left no stone unturned when it comes to finding the best resources to help our people get up to speed as quickly as possible.

But even after 17 years, we’re constantly searching for ways to think differently. As luck would have it, a new player would take to the field and upend everything we thought we knew.

Enter Trailhead.

(Logo for "Navigating the Salesforce Advantage, our newest trail on Trailhead!)

If you aren’t hip on Trailhead, our fun, easy and free way to learn Salesforce skills online, Adam Seligman, our SVP of Developer Marketing, did a great post about it here; definitely worth a read. It’s changing the way people understand Salesforce, opening up our ecosystem to a whole new market of people, and inspiring a culture of fun in learning.

We can’t develop a world class sales training program without fun. We’re here to give our sales people the confidence to be consultants, advisors, and visionaries to their customers. We give them all the reasons they need to believe in what they do. You can’t do that without fun, and here Trailhead is serving it up on a platter.

If customers love it, why couldn’t this work for our employees?

So my team put it to the test and started collecting Trailhead badges left and right. They’re like all the swag at a Taylor Swift concert, you gotta get ‘em all. I couldn’t stop my team from learning more if I tried. They’d be sneaking around in dark corners earning badges on the sly.

We immediately set to work creating “trails” for our sales army. The premise of our first (of many to come) is simple, but essential. It’s about who we are, what we do, and why we do it.  It’s called “Navigating the Salesforce Advantage”, and it’s available on Trailhead for all to read. Go check it out here.

Whether you’re new to Salesforce and want to learn what it’s all about, a pro developer or admin who wants a way to explain Salesforce to your grandparents, or a current Salesforce employee who needs to get up to speed, this is the trail for you.

Starting now, every new employee, even outside of our sales organization, will be taking this trail during onboarding. If we had the power, we’d hope that every new customer would,too. Understanding why we do what we do here at Salesforce is the first step in creating a model of success for our employees, and our customers. Because at the heart of it, customer success is what this company is all about.

We’re really excited about this evolution in our machine of an enablement program. Trailhead isn't just changing the way the world learns Salesforce; it’s changing the way Salesforce learns Salesforce. We’re thinking differently, and we’re better because of it.

Want to see it in action? Check out the “Navigating the Salesforce Advantage” trail, and see how we’re using Trailhead to enable the entire Salesforce community, inside and out. Excited to hear what you think!